Article Guardian: Colds, coughs, stomach bugs: why are so many of us getting ‘winter’ diseases this summer?

[Sly Saint]

........people are getting more colds and taking longer to recover. “I’m seeing far more acute prescriptions coming through than we normally do at this time of year,” she says. The majority are for steroid inhalers, which can help people to manage symptoms such as coughs and breathing issues, and antibiotics for those who develop a secondary infection. “We’ve had more than 20 families over the past few weeks with complaints about headaches, sore throats, coughs and fevers that are not clearing up as quickly as a virus would usually clear. They are testing negative for Covid yet continue to be unwell.

We used to see people with chronic fatigue syndrome getting repeated infections. Now the same symptoms are caused by Covid

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...any-of-us-getting-winter-diseases-this-summer

(no idea why they asked Dr Maroof Harghandiwal "a functional medical specialist and Covid expert with Zen Healthcare" for comment. )

 

[perchance dreamer]

All the more reason to wear masks in public. At the grocery store yesterday, a small child was was coughing, and it sounded very phlegmy. I was glad to be wearing a good mask. I haven't had any colds in the past couple of years, which I attribute to masks. Now I have to go knock on wood.

 

[rvallee]

We used to see people with chronic fatigue syndrome getting repeated infections

Who's "we"? Because a common scenario is a troll face "what, you think a virus did this to you?" like it's some kind of gotcha. I basically haven't left the house in a year. Haven't been normal sick in many years exactly because of that. Unless they mean having symptoms of illness, in which case "yeah, duh", but that's not what's said here.

How would anyone even know that when this isn't researched anywhere and no one keeps detailed medical records for this stuff and most routine infections aren't checked or recorded, most of which happen with zero contact with healthcare? Really fed up with how common it is for physicians to state their opinion like it's a fact.

Maybe that's true, I doubt it, but we basically know more about the damn surface of Mars than we do about this disease so it'd be great if people stopped making stuff up about us.

 

[Wits_End]

We used to see people with chronic fatigue syndrome getting repeated infections

Did we? Can't say I remember that.

 

[CRG]

Ugh - the Guardian uses the phrase "busy mum" - pretty much says it all about this nonsense article. For anyone wanting a longish read on viral 'seasonality' Seasonality of viral infections: mechanisms and unknowns

"Abstract
Seasonality is a long-recognized attribute of many viral infections of humans, but the mechanisms underlying seasonality, particularly for person-to-person communicable diseases, remain poorly understood. Better understanding of drivers of seasonality could provide insights into the relationship between the physical environment and infection risk, which is particularly important in the context of global ecological change in general, and climate change in particular.

In broad terms, seasonality represents oscillation in pathogens’ effective reproductive number, which, in turn, must reflect oscillatory changes in infectiousness, contact patterns, pathogen survival, or host susceptibility. Epidemiological challenges to correct identification of seasonal drivers of risk include failure to adjust for predictable correlation between disease incidence and seasonal exposures, and unmeasured confounding.

The existing evidence suggests that the seasonality of some enteric and respiratory viral pathogens may be driven by enhanced wintertime survival of pathogens, and also by increased host susceptibility resulting from relative ‘wintertime immune suppression’. For vector-borne diseases and zoonoses, environmental influences on vector or reservoir abundance, and vector biting rates, are probably more important. However, numerous areas of uncertainty exist, making this an exciting area for future research."

My bold.

 

[ukxmrv]

The comment about steroid inhalers caught my eye. My asthma has come back since Covid.
So many problems with my chest. My lungs feel painful inside plus muscle pain and spasms from all the coughing.